Open The Dialogue

While Twitter basks in the glow of a huge, front-page NYT Biz section article – are the villagers gathering, getting ready to “storm the castle”?  John Brissenden points to an interesting post by Andrew Davis @ TippingPoint Labs about Tumblr being the heir-apparent to all the buzz that got Twitter rolling off your parent’s tounges in the first place.  

Mmmm, hockey sticks!

1. A quick search on Google Trends for the phrase “Twitter Sucks” shows a HUGE spike starting in February of this year (10X more searches in March than in February.)
2. The recent explosion of a ‘vrial video’ about a fictional new nano-blogging site called Flutter has almost half a million views in the last week. (Or this video from a month ago with over 1.5 MM views.)
3. Last week, Twitter users were hit with the first ‘Twitter Spam Hack Attack.‘
4. People are quickly realizing that the more people you follow the less value you get out of the people you follow. I call this the Diminishing Tweet Value Theorem, which states that the value of your own twitter stream is inversely proportional to the number of people you follow.
5. The mainstream media has grasped a firm hold on pushing their @ user names (a sure sign it’s nearing the top of it’s escalation phase.)
6. Rumors are rampant about a potential Google acquisition and the debate about how exactly to monetize Twitter continues to escalate (another sure sign it’s heading towards the monetization phase of the Tippingpoint Labs New Media Life Cycle.)

While he admits that the evidence cited above is “fairly circumstansial,” taking a look at Gartner’s hype cycle below – it lines up with the general early adopter consensus I’ve seen going around the web and even in conversations with colleagues at MWW.  They’re conviced of some shark jumping going on when they get follow requests from their parents.

So, is Tumblr really next?  I think it’s too early to tell.  I have it run jratlee.com but while Andrew goes over some great background of the service in his post and looks at some interesting adoption rates (definitely click-through, it’s a great read) – Tumblr can be a lot of things to different people.

Twitter hit the scene by being one thing and having a concise purpose.  Although, being so concise might be what is taking Twitter towards the “trough” to begin with.  Andrew makes a great point towards the end of his post:

If Twitter is a babbling four year old, going on and on about nothing important, Tumblr is a smart yound adult digesting content, commenting on it and contextualizing it for their audience. That’s far more valuable.

Only time will tell on this one.

UPDATE:  Sarah Lacy joins the party, calling foul.  Her points make sense from a company existence but, sometimes, I wish TechCrunch would just think a bit more about how people actually use these tools instead of just the dollars and cents.

A BPP die-hard, I was skeptical of The Takeaway – seemingly NPR’s second stab at a hip, in-the-know, multi-medium news show.  Most days, I follow the RSS feed and actually listen-in on Friday mornings durring my commute.

Last Friday, I was treated to a surprise:  The Takeaway was asking their audience to play a massive game of Foursquare.  Throughout the show, listeners “checked-in” with updates from the mundane to the exciting.  Some were starting their day, some were already in the throes of closing out a week.  It was weird hearing these updates verbalized when you’re so conditioned to reading them in an endless stream of ephemera.  That might be why status update services like Twitter work so well/have been adopted so quickly but that is a post for another day.  You can click through to listen to some of the best ones they received.

Scott Lamb, senior editor at another personal favorite of mine – BuzzFeed, was also a guest on the show and broke down the appeal of these hip new social networks:

Like the absurd mundanity of Twitter, Foursquare encourages broadcasting the small stuff, letting people know where you went for lunch. And that’s exactly the appeal — get to know what I do, and you’ll get to know who I am. And there’s an undeniable joy at finding yourself near the top of the week’s leaderboard. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go check in — I’m trying to earn some points here.

Much like CNN on Twitter, it’s always very refreshing seeing and experiencing mediums whom are undergoing massive change (in terms of consumption) embrace new technology that maybe their entire audience doesn’t get just yet but, most importantly, the passionate ones are already using.

Update:  Producer Jim Colgan gives the back-story to why they decided to experiment with Foursquare, etc.:

No major news was broken with this experimental journalism. But in many significant ways we broke down the barriers between the radio hosts and the radio audience. Even the people who didn’t call in were hearing about the people who did, fellow listeners whose experience they shared each time we played or read a response.

The day after April Fools on the web always seems like a bad hangover. Everyone is struggling to right themselves and get back to work after a day full of bad jokes and tip-toeing around the web unsure if all the tweets they’re reading are actually true or not. The few that caught my eye:

• HarperStudio promised free eBooks to anyone who wrote a “Twitter review.”
• Josh Hallett came into the office and was greeted with an early Christmas present:  all his stuff.  Thinking about the noise his chair made with all that wrapping paper still on it just cracks me up.
• CW11 actually fell for Improv Everywhere’s funeral spoof (hat tip Alex).
• Retribution for CollegeHumor’s Ricky Van Veen.  After he convinced his staff that MTV picked up a second season, they got him over a thousand followers on a fake Twitter account.

Moving on…

The fun ‘n games are over.  Here are some posts that we’ve been tracking.  Pardon the volume, there has been a lot of good stuff bouncing around:

• Matt Haughey gives a great snapshot on how the web works for most people vs. how most marketers are approaching it.
• Facebook is looking to lock-in the older demographics who are flooding onto the social network.  They’ve created a private groups for families wizard that helps anyone easily get their family in one, private place on Facebook.
• Not watching home base – Seth Godin talks about the value of searching for more vs. the value of catering to those whom already pay attention to you.
• Peter Kim points to a solid debate about the value of Twittering during conferences and how it might affect our memory.
• Merlin Mann on why people matter.
• Ryan Carson nails it – building communities from scratch on the web is hard work and it takes time.  Plain and simple.
• A quick & dirty comparison of Twitter vs. a Facebook ad – take a wild guess at who wins (via Neal).
• Convinced writing something isn’t the best way to get your point across and help people understand something?  You’re probably right.
• Mark Cuban is pretty curious about where all the time comes from that lets people sit on Twitter all day.
• Valeria Maltoni writes up a very thorough guide to micro interactions in PR.  The big power of PR, when using social media, is the ability to hone in on single interactions that often translate to strong relationships.
• Gina Trapani takes a look at what crowdsourcing really means on her excellent new blog, Smarterware.

Miss LOTD?  Want More?  We’re always sharing stuff on FriendFeed and Twitter.

Another great video from Gary.  He speaks the truth, kids.  It’s all about ratios (do you really want 500 passive people or 25 passionate people?) and the kind of people you want to help.  Yes, help.  Rarely is anything successful on the web when you design it to need people.  Instead, try making something people need.

Celebrities using Twitter is all the rage right now.  Rightfully so, it gives them a hungry, always-on audience which they can control the message with.  Something a lot of them might not be used to these days.  Fan favorite, P.Diddy broke on to the Twitter-scene not too long ago in only a way Diddy could:  trying to raise his spirits via the bedroom.

Starting two nights ago, he’s updating semi-live from recording sessions for his new album.  Pointing out that lots are asking him to do live Ustream sessions, etc. but, respectively, he says that he needs to edit his stuff because it’s hard for him to watch his mouth and doesn’t want to end up on “CNN” (even so, some NSFW language follows):

Besides the obvious mainstream exposure for Twitter, why does this matter?

As the night went on, P. eventually got around to an early breakfast – at 6am – sampling different fried chickens.  Popeye’s & KFC.  At the end of each video throughout the first night, Diddy asks his audience to reply to him on Twitter about the questions he asks in each.  Someone from Popeye’s was listening and last night’s session started off with a delivery from them and Mr. Combs himself asking KFC to step-up.  Classic opportunity for engagement and getting your product in front of captive, dedicated audiences.  It’ll be interesting to see how either brand takes advantage of the rapid celebrity involvement and speed at witch this technology moves.  Quite honestly though, the bigger story is how quickly this might change the celebrity “endorsement” game.

Where do we go from here?  We’re only a “tweet” away.